Cognitive Theory

Cognitive Theory

1. Stages of Cognitive Development

   • 1. Sensorimotor Stage (Birth- 2 years)
     • The main achievement here is object permanence- knowing an object exists even if it is hidden. It requires the ability to form a mental representation of the object.
   • 2.Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
     • Young children are able to think about things symbolically. This is the ability to make one thing stand for something other than itself. Thinking is still egocentric, and the infant has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others.
   • 3. Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
     • Piaget considered this as a major turning point in the child's cognitive development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought. The child can work things out internally in their head and can conserve number, mass and weight. Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though it's appearance changes.
   • 4. Formal Operational Stage (11+)
     • People develop the ability think about abstract concepts and logically test hypothesis.

2. Object Permanence

   • Knowing an object still exists even if it is hidden by forming a mental representation of the object. The attainment of object permanence signals the transition into the next stage of development.
   • Blanket and Ball experiment: They hid a toy under a blanket why the child was watching and then they observed whether the child searched for the toy which would give evidence of object permanence . Piaget found the child could only search for a toy if they had a mental representation.

3. Egotistical Language

   • Language Ego
     • 'The identity a person develops in reference to the language they speak' Alexander Guiro
     • Children are used to sounding like children all the time so have more pliable so don't have formed ego's. Adults have spent their whole lives defining themselves and we tend to dislike looking stupid infant of others.
     • When children develop skills, everyone is different. When they start going to school it helps their speech a lot and therefore teachers help them by remembering that someones language ability doesn't reflect on their intelligence. Make tasks cognitively challenging but not overwhelming at the affective level and consider children ego when correcting speech.

4. Usage Based linguistics

   • Includes a variety of perspectives sharing the viewpoint that grammar is not only a system for producing and understanding language but also shaped by those processes during linguistic interactions.
     • This is the idea that language is moving towards the idea that language is adapting around how you interpret the relationship between usage and grammar.